Best E-Commerce Platform

In this article, you will find a general overview of the Best E-Commerce Platform, in order to understand which, one is best suited to your needs. For each platform we analyzed some main aspects:

• Initial configuration and ease of use
• Functions available with image gallery
• Design and themes
• Maintenance
• Start-up costs
• Who is it for
• Pros and cons

How to prove it

In addition, you will also find some main statistics on the diffusion of each of the e-commerce and a summary infographic practice.

List of e-commerce in comparison

Which e-commerce have we considered? Here they are listed here, with a short presentation and some statistics:

1. Shopify – The easiest to use and the most widespread globally, even if in Italy it is still struggling to catch on. Low costs, basic functions to start and possibility of use even by those who are not skilled in the matter. It is perfect if you are looking for a cloud service ready to leave in a few minutes and you are not afraid of paying a small monthly subscription. It is not suitable for those who prefer a solution to be installed on their own server or are looking for professional functions and tools.

Shopify statistics

• Currently adopted by 880,000 sites, growing.
• About 22,000 Top 1M sites (See below).
• As year, Shopify made over $1.5 billion in sales during Black Friday. This meant 10,978 orders per minute and peak sales volume per minute of $870,000.
• 87% of merchants use the Shopify App Store and they have 6 apps installed on average. Expectedly, the App Store has generated over $100 million in revenue.
• Shopify Inc. raised $131 million in its IPO (initial public offering). Less than 3 years later it had a market cap of $10 billion and was similar in size to Twitter Inc.
• Shopify has paid over $850,000 to more than 300 ethical hackers for help in resolving security issues.
• There is a 126% year-over-year average growth for Shopify Plus merchants.

Shopify is simple to use, affordable and customer-friendly. They back the latter claim with their 24/7 customer support via email, live chat, and phone.

2. WooCommerce-The economic alternative, by far the most used by small entrepreneurs, small / medium enterprises and by those who want to try to sell online without spending a capital. It is the perfect solution for those who want to start selling on their WordPress site without having to worry about signing up for a subscription.

“WooCommerce is a great platform for those looking to start an ecommerce store with relatively low costs. You can always scale your store as your ecommerce business grows,” says Donald Chan, founder of remote working blog WFH Wins.

WooCommerce statistics

• Used by over 470,000 sites globally, constantly growing.
• 26,000 sites in Top 1M (See below).
• 3,317,205 live websites in worldwide
• WooCommerce has 82,090,926 downloads

3. Wix – Vickers is famous for its simple website builder, with drag-and-drop interface and development wonderland suitable for beginners. Wix e-commerce has also achieved some success with competitive prices and decent themes. Basically, the Wix e-commerce system allows the sale of anything from clothing to specialty cakes. It even supports digital goods such as audio files and e-books.

Wix statistics

• 413,358 paid Wix-based websites in the world
• 105,199 websites in USA
• 44,000 Wix apps are installed every day.

4.Squarespace – Similar to Wix, Squarespace is a website builder that uses drag and drop operations. Their initial focus was on making visually appealing websites. Recently, the site is investing more energy in e-commerce and letting its users sell products online. So far, they have begun to become a mature e-commerce platform.

Squarespace statistics

• 3,684,602 websites worldwide.
• 1,862,496 live websites

5. BigCommerce – There are currently more than 95,000 live streaming websites using BigCommerce online sales of goods and payment processing system, there are good reasons to believe that BigCommerce provides a viable and powerful interface for your e-commerce needs. Our BigCommerce review covers all aspects of the e-commerce platform, from functionality to security and support.

BigCommerce statistics

• 153,346 sites worldwide.
• 4,300 sites in Top 1M (See below).

If you are in a hurry, inside the infographic you can find a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of each solution. If, on the other hand, you are interested in learning more, read on.

Why exactly these?

Because those listed are currently the 5 most used e-commerce in the world. And to say they are rather authoritative entities: Google. Below are some graphs that demonstrate it:

The Google Trends chart of world searches (Google search engine – last 12 months) of the e-commerce listed. More research means greater general interest. The data are updated daily.

Some graphs taken, which represent the number of detected websites that adopt one or the other technology. The graphs show only the sites in Top 1M. The Top 1M is the ranking with the first million sites in the world, by number of monthly users.

Image

Shopify

Let’s start with what is probably the most popular e-commerce site in the world right now. After the boom of a few years ago with the phenomenon of drop shipping, Shopify is currently the undisputed giant of the sector and certainly the first of the alternatives to be considered to create an e-commerce on the net in a very short time. It is a paid cloud service, through which it is possible to create a virtual shop without great computer skills. Extremely simple to use, Shopify offers all the necessary features to start quickly and without too many headaches. Here are some of the peculiarities of the basic version of Shopify:

• Configuration of products and catalog
• Payments by credit card, PayPal etc.
• Discount codes management
• Configurable shipping rates and taxes
• Reviews
• Integration with the main social networks
• SEO friendly themes and already suitable for mobile
• Security and fraud protection systems
• Integrated blog
• Import and export files
• Advanced statistics and analysis reports (Finance, sales, etc.)
• Management of abandoned carts
• Ability to do drop shipping (With third-party plugins)

Many other features are also available, which generally vary in quantity and quality according to the plan purchased, with the formula “The more you pay, the more you get”.

Feature

If you spend a lot of time browsing Shopify reviews or viewing the top-ranked CRM and online website builders, you will notice that Shopify has many features available.

The question is, what are the most important things you should pay attention to?

We ’ve searched for reviews of many of Shopify ’s leading online companies and tested the software ourselves to come up with the following list of the most critical components: Shopify:

• Abandoned shopping cart recovery: The average online shopping cart abandonment rate today is about 68.81%. This means that for each 10 7 customers does not leave the store to buy things. Fortunately, Shopify provides automatic email triggers and other tools to help you recover your abandoned shopping cart.
• Automatic shipment calculation: shipping products to customers all over the world? Don’t worry about calculating those complicated shipping costs-just let Shopify work for you! The real-time carrier transportation service calculates the exact shipping cost of a specific product based on the weight of the specific product and the location of the customer.
• Shopify POS machine: You can store your payment online or offline for Shopify, thanks to Shopify’s point of sale system. Read our Shopify POS review for more information.
• Customer Profile: Make sure you always get the best information about your target audience through custom user profiles. This is ideal when you want to segment marketing and sales activities.
• Simple discount codes: Sales and discounts can help increase revenue. Shopify provides a great “bulk discount” solution that allows you to generate discount codes to free shipping, percentages and amounts.
• Social media integration: If you have a large number of social fans, you can re-create your own Shopify to establish an e-commerce website on Facebook through the “Store” tab. Allow people to buy goods directly from you without having to visit your website.
• Let Shopify delivery services save lives: Shopify provides shipping solutions so you can avoid the time-consuming steps of opening a store, such as transportation, packaging, and loading and unloading.
• Shopify experts: As we mentioned in Shopify reviews elsewhere, you can visit experts to get additional guidance and support in design, programming, marketing, etc. This will ensure that you always get the most from the online store.

If all of these features are not enough to make you excited, which also includes hundreds of professional themes, complete blog platform, a unique domain name and SSL certificate, you can choose from 70 payment gateways, marketing and SEO support.

Shopify vs mobile e-commerce

What is good Shopify is that you can also manage a lot of operations through the mobile app.

You can perform certain tasks through the Shopify mobile app including:

• Take and upload product photos
• Edit product details, such as pricing
• Add products to the store
• Fulfill orders and provide refunds
• Purchase and print shipping labels
• Get conversion statistics
• View real-time sales information and view real-time traffic
• Receive order notifications (see below)
• Contact members of your team

Design and themes

One of the things Shopify really does is the themes and designs available. The company provides the most professional themes in any e-commerce platform. At the time of writing, there are eight free themes available, and there are more than 60 paid themes (each theme is between $ 160 and $ 180).

Previously there were more topics in the catalog, but Shopify decided to remove old content and only keep modern content optimized for modern audiences and search engines.

That being said, each theme is not only a “single theme”, but actually contains several styles. For example, a theme named Icon has four different styles. These styles are not only different in color scheme, but also in how elements are displayed on the page.

Multiple collections and industry Shopify themed stores are highlighted in it, so we are very confident that you will be able to find something suitable for your business model.

Maintenance

The beauty of Shopify also lies in this: being an e-commerce service in the cloud, there is no need to worry about any updates or maintenance, everything is automatically managed by the site at no additional cost.

Pricing

How much does Shopify cost? Shopify is a subscription service and as such has a monthly fee. The minimum cost is 9 dollars a month but it allows us to sell only on Facebook. To actually open our digital store, we have to spend at least $ 29 a month by purchasing the “Shopify basic” package. If instead we are a big company and we need all the features that eCommerce can offer we can buy the “Shopify plus” package at a cost of about $ 2000monthly (The rate is variable and it is necessary to request a quote from the staff). Then there are some intermediate packages for small and medium-sized businesses, of $ 29, $ 79 and $ 299 monthly respectively. In addition to the monthly subscription, it is normally necessary to take into account any additional variable costs to be spent to purchase professional themes or other particular features that we will have to add to our shop.

Overall

Shopify is probably the best choice if you have a minimum budget available and are looking for a cloud service that takes care of itself, very simple to use and ready to go in the shortest possible time. It is not recommended for companies that seek absolute control over their e-commerce and do not want to depend on third-party platforms, or who need fully customizable, higher-level professional solutions.

Shopify Advantages 

• Very simple to use, even for those who do not chew a lot of information technology, internet and e-commerce.
• It is currently the most used globally among cloud services of this type.
• It needs no proprietary server or maintenance.
• It provides all the basic functionality to launch an e-commerce.
• Support 7/7, 24/24 included in the price.

Shopify Disadvantages

• A monthly subscription is required, at variable costs based on how professional the online shop is.
• Being a service only, the software source code is not available. It is therefore not possible to integrate it with other software systems (CRM, ERP, etc.) nor create new particular functions / pages such as advanced product configurators.
• Once the e-shop is implemented, you remain dependent on the Shopify platform. This means that once the subscription is over, the existence of eCommerce also ceases.

How to prove it

You can try Shopify by subscribing to the 14-day free trial at the link: shopify.com

WooCommerce

With an overall coverage of over 20% on all online e-commerce stores, WooCommerce is certainly the main free alternative that is worth investigating. WooCommerce is basically a free plugin that allows you to sell products from any site developed in WordPress. In the basic version, it offers the essential functions necessary to sell your items, from the publication of the products to the payment, through the calculation of taxation and checkout. Here are some of the primary features of WooCommerce:

• Configuration of digital and physical products, classification by type, product variables and variants, SKU
• Automatic basic calculation of customer taxation and geolocation
• Supports all major payment systems including wire transfer, check, pay on delivery, Paypal, Amazon Pay, Stripe, Square, eWay, Pay Fast, Klarna and a multitude of others
• Integration with WordPress for publishing blogs and content
• Fully customizable website theme and layout
• Basic inventory management
• Basic management of transport costs
• Specific functions for SEO optimization
• Charts, reports and basic statistics

As already said, the “out of the box” version of WooCommerce offers all the basic functions, however to have a fully functional system we will have to install a good amount of additional extensions (Free or paid). For example, to integrate it with a CRM, to completely manage shipments and warehouses or to do marketing automation.

Configuration

As for Magento, WooCommerce requires a dedicated domain and hosting, and must be installed and configured manually on the WordPress site that we will have taken care to install previously on the server. Being a plugin, WooCommerce is particularly easy to install on the site. The procedure is the same as any other WordPress plugin: just go to the WordPress plugin directory and load the plugin, or even more simply use the appropriate automatic installation feature available from the WP dashboard. Once installed, the entire system is operational in minutes thanks to the installation wizard, including payments and shipments. As in the case of Magento, however, customizing and configuring the platform at best takes some time and a minimum of computer skills to solve the most common problems.

Design and themes

WooCommerce relies on compatible WordPress themes. To find the right theme for us then we will have to turn to the WordPress theme library, obviously making sure that the chosen theme is compatible with our e-commerce plugin. Alternatively, we can find themes designed specifically for WooCommerce, both free and premium paid, by searching online. Or we could build one from scratch … if we have the skills to do it and have time.

Maintenance

WooCommerce needs the normal maintenance that all WordPress plugins need: it is necessary to periodically update it to the most recent version together with the WordPress core, themes and other plugins installed. As in the case of Magento, updating can create problems that cannot be solved in a simple way, and for which it is necessary to have programming skills or a dedicated professional.

Pricing

WooCommerce is a free plugin in itself, but it doesn’t offer advanced features that other more professional solutions offer. Such as advanced SEO tools, functions for warehouse management and accounting, billing, etc. To obtain additional features, we are normally forced to install other specific free or paid plugins, or alternatively to develop the features from scratch. And all these costs must be considered in the overall calculation.

Overall

WooCommerce is probably a good choice for the curious who want to try eCommerce online for the first time, for free or without investing exorbitant amounts. Or for those who already have a WordPress site and are looking for the cheapest solution to start selling products online, without necessarily having a budget to invest to start and maintain the business and without having to create a special site for the sale. WooCommerce is fine for small and medium-sized enterprises that need a simple and cheap solution to try to sell on the internet, while it is absolutely unsuitable for large companies, which normally have very high sales volumes, need very advanced reports and statistics , and have internal processes that require integration and automation with ERP, accounting or other complex software systems.

Advantages  

• Basically, it is totally free. And on the net, there are additional plugins and equally free themes to extend its functionality.
• Large number of themes and over 400 extensions available to use for personalization.
• It is by far the most used among free / cheap e-commerce.
• The framework is fully customizable according to your needs. You can create totally customized themes, plugins and functions, provided you have the necessary experience to do it.

Disadvantages

• To use it you need to have domain, hosting and site on WordPress platform.
• It must be kept up to date, and updates can lead to more or less serious problems.
• It is not nearly as secure as professional solutions or cloud services.
• Basically, it does not have all the advanced features made available by more professional solutions, such as Magento for example. It is essential to install (and in part, purchase) many other plugins to add professional functions, with exponential risk that the extensions used are totally abandoned by the developers or that the updates create conflicts that are difficult to solve later.
• You need to have computer knowledge and a little experience with WordPress to make it work properly. Installation and configuration are relatively simple, but dealing with the resulting problems can be difficult, especially if you are not a specialist in the field and above all if the system is reaching considerable dimensions.
• As it is structured, it can suffer from performance problems when the number of visitors rises above a certain limit. It is not very scalable.

However, not all functions are visible. The only other alternative is to download and install both WordPress and WooCommerce. We are not aware of other official demonstration sites: If you have created a test site for WooCommerce or know one, report it in the comments!

Wix

The first thing most site builders face is the template repository, as does Wix. The site has more than 500 templates, neatly categorized for you to read carefully. After browsing most of the content, I found that Wix provides a variety of mashups, from simple to all-round style.

Editing templates is a miracle, the interface provides many real drag-and-drop options. Just touch the project you want to inspire, just fill in the details and it will start. In addition, it is worth noting that Wix continues to add and improve features that accurately integrate with current trends and technologies.

One example is the recently launched Search Engine Optimization (SEO Wizard). This is based on the fact that more and more people are beginning to realize that SEO can help improve their online interaction status. Use this search engine to easily optimize your personal website.

For online merchants, Wix not only has e-commerce payment options, you can even set a reservation schedule on your website. This caters to the interests of consumers and is unprecedented.

• Advanced product configuration & 500 templates
• Integrated CMS system for publishing blogs and content
• Management of multiple stores (e.g. clothing, games, furniture, beauty products …) from the same dashboard.
• Wide availability of Web services and APIs for integration with other software systems
• Fully customizable website theme and layout
• Management of customer groups
• Ability to do A / B and multivariate tests of product pages
• Supports all major payment systems, including wire transfer, credit card, Paypal, Amazon Pay, Google Checkout
• Real-time calculation of transport costs with the main operators and integrated system for the management of shipments. UPS and FedEx are included in the basic edition, DHL, TNT and others after installing the related extensions
• Management of gift cards, gift packages and Wishlist
• Integrated system for order tracking by the customer, with notification email
• Automatic calculation of taxation by location, product, user segment …
• Specific functions for SEO optimization
• Graphs, reports and advanced statistics on sales, on the number of abandoned carts, on inventories, on the best-selling and most viewed products, taxes and tax, coupons …
• Advanced marketing and promotion tools, visitor profiling and segmentation, newsletters, surveys, discounts and promotional prices, landing, coupon attribution rules, price restrictions, volume discounts, bundled products, etc.
• Automatic creation and printing of invoices and delivery notes
• Dedicated specific dashboard for the Call Center
• Complete management of the product catalog, both for physical and digital products

Configuration

After creating an account and scanning a common dashboard, Wix e-commerce seems to provide the standard features expected by any e-commerce platform. In other words, compared to a similar solution Shopify, you will find that the Wix system lacks many features.

Wix has an easy-to-use dashboard, and the drag-and-drop interface is suitable for beginners. It has an application market that includes add-ons and other cool things, such as contact forms and receipts.

However, again the Shopify add-on library focuses on e-commerce add-ons, and Wix also covers everything except e-commerce. For Wix, this is a powerful advantage because it allows you to expand all aspects of the site.

You can quickly add product pages, integrate social media, including images, and even change shapes and buttons. These are all to be expected, but it is good to know that Wix has done a good job in basics.

I like how you add quick product galleries, and even quickly buy buttons or show sales. A thank-you message pops up immediately after someone buys it. The seamless checkout process is secure, and based on the message, emails you to keep the loop.

Design and themes

Regarding Wix e-commerce templates, I have one thing to say: they are very modern.

If you want, you can now use them to quickly expand your store. Yes, templates allow beginners to still build a basic website without worrying about coding complexity. however. Wix now provides some code called Wix , which opens the API for advanced customization and integration.

I used to think that Wix was not suitable for more complicated customizations like this, but it would definitely change. Therefore, if you are completing a task, you can hire a developer or do the work yourself.

Overall, you cannot beat design in terms of cleanliness. They start your first store is great, and can even grow into a medium-sized business.

Maintenance

Ease of use is a powerful area of Wix because the drag-and-drop editor is perfect. Wix has always provided this service to its website builders. Now it has been integrated into the e-commerce website. The dashboard has only a few buttons to choose from, helping beginners hone the most important tasks.

Simply drag and drop the mouse to move each component on the homepage and product page. This way you do n’t have to worry about using code for customization. You will also receive a good task bar at the top to post or save your work, ensuring that you will not lose anything.

The five buttons on the left side of the dashboard allow you to modify the page, add components, design projects, enter the app market and use your settings. The Wix store also has a dedicated button, which is very helpful for quickly checking orders, customers and inventory. Overall, the interface is simple, fun, and easy on the eyes. It is more specific to e-commerce and includes options such as product catalogs, orders, store promotion options and more.

Pricing

Feel free to view all Wix pricing plans on this page, but the breakdown of e-commerce sites is simple. If you pay the upfront cost of each year, you will spend less every month, but we will cover the monthly plan. E-commerce and VIP plans are the only options for online stores. Therefore, you must pay $ 17 or $ 25 per month.

The e-commerce plan comes with a one-year free domain name, some interesting ad code for marketing your website, two premium add-ons for free and 20GB storage. VIP provides unlimited bandwidth, VIP support, priority response and professional website review. As for online store tools, the VIP plan is not much different from the e-commerce plan.

If you need to save money for startups or small businesses, this price is one of the best in the industry and can beat such things as Shopify or Squarespace.

Overall

Who would I recommend? Wix e-commerce platform? Only business owners who plan to sell less than 100 products. You can make your website look quite professional and run a fully functional payment system through the interface, the dashboard is very easy to use.

That is, if you have any questions about the Wix e-commerce system, please delete a line in the comments section.

Wix Advantage

• Good pricing options
• Wide selection of drag and drop user interfaces
• Like Shopify, the self-built platform is easy to use and very quick to set up. No coding knowledge required, you can use a user-friendly editor to drag and drop content to any location on the site.
• The coolest thing is that they have more than 500 templates specially made for online stores and can even provide stock images that you can use immediately.
• Of course, Wix offers a fully functional shopping cart that provides all the features you need. There are hundreds of apps on the official app market that can further improve your website.

Wix Disadvantages

• Data is not allowed to be exported (you are trapped by Wix)
• What you need to remember is that Wix is not a pure self-built station platform. It is first and foremost a website building platform capable of selling things. Therefore, e-commerce features may require you to have a little code base.
• Please also note that the website template cannot be changed after publishing the website, which is a big disadvantage.

How to prove it

You can try Wix by subscribing to the 14-day free trial at the link: wix.com

Squarespace

Squarespace is one of those marketing and business building tools that most people have heard of. After years of effective marketing and promotion, the company is very famous. However, there are still many people do not fully informed Squarespace functions and how they work.

Similar to many online store builders, from Shopify to BigCommerce, Squarespace can help business owners build the ideal store. With Squarespace, you can use drag-and-drop to instantly see what you are doing, and design a website immediately.

Squarespace allows you to create websites without having to learn any code or find your own web host. It has some of the best themes for the website builder environment, and it has powerful feature support.

Configuration

Squarespace is an excellent tool for anyone who wants their website to look incredible and attract the attention of potential customers. What follows is that Squarespace business solutions will also really help you show off online.

As a Content Management System (CMS), Squarespace has many functions, widgets and integration. You can integrate Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. It is not as customizable as WordPress, but it does not lack any important features. In fact, Squarespace provides more built-in tools than WordPress. However, WordPress often has an advantage in terms of expansion, because Squarespace does not have an app or plugin store.

As an e-commerce platform, the feature list is growing rapidly, and appears to be concentrated on the most important element of e-commerce. Squarespace is still suitable for small and medium enterprises, but it supports an unlimited number of products and transactions. Not only that, ordinary business and personal sites are now integrated with e-commerce tools (not long ago, you need to pay for the Squarespace Commerce program).

The Business Squarespace website requires very little transaction fees, but you can avoid this completely by upgrading to a basic online store.

Regarding features, you simply can’t compare Squarespace to Shopify or BigCommerce. I would compare it to the list of features big cartel. It’s a bit light, but still provides all the important features for most people who want to sell online (basic coupons, packing slips, MailChimp integration, customizable email, etc.).

Design and themes

This is the powerful suit of Squarespace Commerce. These guys are famous for their design. The template provided is excellent. I counted 16 online store themes and 80 standard themes, all of which have fashionable names such as Devlin, Five, Wells, Hudson, and Dovetail. They are so beautiful. They can be easily customized and respond quickly, so they are suitable for mobile devices. Many designs take into account blogs, art and creativity, and have created a good small category for e-commerce.

I’m not sure how much difference it, but at first glance, seems to be so Shopify and the subject is obviously to be sold, and a square space theme is beautiful for us. Squarespace had only about 10 themes before, so the choice of themes was improved. Therefore, this 80+ mark makes such things as Shopify and Bigcommerce. And, from my personal point of view, the Squarespace theme looks much better.

Shopify has exceeded 150, Bigcommerce has exceeded 100, and Volusion has 120, but you need to pay extra for some of them, especially for Volusion, some of which are of poor quality. At least all Squarespace templates are of high quality. Now, I want to say that Squarespace ’s design is excellent, and even if there are few choices, I will rate them as most e-commerce platforms.

Maintenance

Building a website and online store Squarespace Commerce is easy. The dashboard is clean and modern, with a menu tab on the left for you to jump from one page to another.

For example, you may want to check inventory, then add discounts, and then market. All these tabs can be simply clicked on the dashboard. I might even argue that this interface is easier to understand Shopify than the universal interface. If you want to do anything, then things get complicated. For example, you will not customize a lot of things beyond what the Squarespace theme gives you-that is, without any custom coding.

Squarespace provides a very powerful design module for adjusting items such as lock screens, logos, templates and a series of settings in the style editor. In fact, most elements on the template are customizable. If you are completely stuck, there is a CSS module to solve it.

This is a real-time editor, but it has no drag and drop elements. Having said that, the settings are intuitive enough for most beginners to handle.

pricing

Squarespace Commerce used to be the only way to accept online transaction payments, but everything has changed. In fact, every plan offered through Squarespace can have some kind of e-commerce functionality.

For example, the business plan listed below still provides you with online sales opportunities. You can still technically embed PayPal-like content into your personal account, but you no longer need any full e-commerce support.

The monthly fee of the business plan is lower, but what is gained is that Squarespace charges a transaction fee:

• Personal – per month to $ 12. This provides you with a 20-page website and supports an unlimited number of products. It also has tools for accepting donations. They no longer provide any e-commerce tools for this plan, but SSL is provided, so you can try the PayPal button as needed.
• Business – $ 18 fully integrated e-commerce store, but need to pay a 3% transaction fee. The company also launched promotional pop-ups, Google email accounts and Google AdWords points. Sell unlimited products and create a website with unlimited pages.

This is good news for companies that want to venture into the world of e-commerce. You can bring your previously created Squarespace site and test products which may be sold on your website. You will be slammed by the transaction fee, but at least your monthly fee will remain the same.

As for the regular Squarespace business plan, there are no transaction fees, and the functions have been improved:

• Business Trip – monthly rate of $ 26 applies to no transaction costs (excluding credit card fees) program, all functions including business plans, unlimited products, free custom domain, mobile optimization, SSL security, powerful business indicators, Squarespace Checkout module on the domain, Xero integration, label printing, inventory, orders, taxes, customer accounts and discounts. Also, checkout is on your domain.
• Senior Business – $ 40 a month for all the features of the previous plan, coupled with the checkout still on your own domain. In addition, you will also get powerful business indicators, inventory, orders, taxes, coupons, abandoned shopping cart recycling, real-time carrier transportation, flexible discounts, gift cards and order APIs.

Squarespace has never been called a cheap website builder. This is a quality solution that costs more than many other platforms. Most free templates are of very high quality, so I think it is worth the price.

Overall

Squarespace is an online website builder designed to provide you with everything you need to build a great website. Squarespace was created for beginners in the digital world, and it has good reason to be a leading website builder.

With Squarespace, you can access some of the best themes and design options on the market, ideal for creative companies. In addition, you can build a brand online in a very attractive visual way. However, Squarespace is not for everyone. Although the non-technical interface is very intuitive, Squarespace is subject to some restrictions, which can make it difficult for some builders to adapt. In addition, for people who lack technical confidence, Squarespace seems to be better. If you know how to build a more advanced website online, you can’t really get the scalability that Squarespace needs.

Overall, Squarespace may be a good choice for those who have a strong interest in beautiful things and want to launch their website without much effort.

Squarespace advantages 

• You can make a truly amazing website: Since its design is suitable for creative small business owners, Squarespace is perfect for designing amazing websites. You can create a perfect homepage with a theme that looks great. Moreover, you don’t need any HTML or CSS knowledge to enter directly.
• Uptime: Squarespace is known for providing excellent reliability and performance compared to many other website builders. You can keep the website up and running for a long time.
• Get a free domain name when you buy it: Squarespace offers a free domain name when you purchase an annual plan. As long as you pay for the service every year, the newly registered domain name will not cost anything. However, if your website is already hosted elsewhere, Squarespace will charge you a small fee for the transfer.
• Free SSL: If you are concerned about the security of your business, then using Squarespace is safe. Whenever you register a domain name, you will get a free WHOIS privacy and SSL certificate. This way, when the target audience interacts with you, they can easily relax.
• Lots of online sales features: Whether you need social media integration or an excellent online checkout system, Squarespace can ensure that you easily profit from the website. You can even create and manage inventory on the back end. Squarespace does not limit the number of items you can sell.
• Complete help center: Squarespace may not have phone support options, but you do get 24/7 email support, live chat, and a full-featured help library that can help you get started.

Squarespace Disadvantages 

• Squarespace is highly priced: Compared with Squarespace ‘s plans for some competitors in the market, they may look high. For example, Wix and Weebly offer free plans, while Squarespace cannot provide such low-cost personal plans.
• Can be slow: According to some critics, the loading time of Squarespace can sometimes be slow. This is a real problem when you need people to move quickly in a shopping cart, especially on mobile devices.
• Limited payment methods: When it comes to transferring people to your shopping cart, Squarespace does not have many payment methods available. If you are a blogger or an e-commerce website owner who wants to make money, then you only need to stick to Stripe.
• It can be difficult to navigate: for beginners, website construction must be as simple as possible. Although Squarespace will do its best to ensure that you will not feel overwhelmed, as a Squarespace user, you may be confused about the process.
• Restrictive templates: Although Squarespace can ensure that your website looks great using the excellent Squarespace templates, there may be some restrictions on using content blocks for building. You cannot fully control where the content is going. This is done to prevent novices from making mistakes, but this may lead to limited creativity and make it more difficult for some people to learn.
• Third-party application restrictions: If you want to merge Squarespace to use things like gsuite and Salesforce, you will be severely restricted. It seems that Squarespace has been avoiding any integration with third-party companies.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is another very popular solution in e-commerce software. It provides your expectations for a high-quality e-commerce platform and is provided in an easy-to-use manner. The way you start taking risks Bigcommerce is very similar to getting started with Shopify. All you need to do is at Bigcommerce.com, through the setup wizard (where you can indicate the products you want to sell and the appearance of the store), you will have the store immediately.

BigCommerce allows you to sell any type of product, and you can even configure many different parameters that describe these products. There are also many options to choose from in terms of theme and store design-especially if you want to save some money and use free designs-these are really beautiful! Many people think that Bigcommerce’s templates are the best in the industry. They look modern and professionally designed.

The overall pricing is similar to Shopify, but you don’t have any monthly plan for $ 9. Most functions are already built-in. For example, the marketing tool is at BigCommerce.

Here are some features you get BigCommerce:

• Unlimited products, orders, file storage and bandwidth
• 24/7 support via live chat
• Level 1 PCI compatibility and multi-layer security and DDOS protection
• Includes SSL certificate
• Point of sale equipment
• Visual builder for your online store website
• Migration tool for importing store data from other systems
• Process payments from PayPal / Braintree, Stripe, Apple Pay, Amazon Payments, etc.
• Inventory management
• Optimized for search engines
• Tools sold on Facebook, Pinterest, eBay and Amazon
• Developer API
• Integration with product comparison sites
• Email marketing module

Configuration

The BigCommerce feature of hundreds of companies that create, maintain, and provide the Internet of Things (IoT) global open standard. Everything starts with website builders because it allows beautiful, responsive design without understanding web design. Add and manage products without problems, and accept payments through various options.

For most suppliers, custom shipping is essential, and BigCommerce has all of them. The flexible tax system and direct download function ensure that you do not have to change your business model just because of your e-commerce system.

Please note: According to our reader BigCommerce, there has been no response to feature requests, which makes it difficult for many customers to justify their costs. For example, many features are built primarily for US customers, which makes the features used elsewhere in the world not entirely useful. In addition, customers complained that they repeatedly asked for useful features in the forum, but never implemented them (such as the ability to customize order status).

In addition to the update issue, we can talk about some benefits. From smart product rules to downloadable sales, email marketing tools to advanced search engine optimization, BigCommerce does have some great features. Now, the question is, are these features sold at reasonable prices, and are they all great in action?

Design and themes

If you go to BigCommerce Theme Store, you can learn if you want to work on BigCommerce. Overall, this is a very good shop, offering free and paid options for different budgets. BigCommerce provides a large number of impressive response templates that you can rely on to take full advantage of the online store’s design. There are 12 free themes to choose from, they are all clean and modern, so this is a good start.

In addition, there are more than 100 paid themes, with prices ranging between $ 145 and $ 235, depending on your needs. Most themes also have different variations so that you can adjust them to your liking. Free themes are the coolest themes I have seen in a while, and it is not very difficult to customize themes or let them do as you wish. Most paid themes are responsive, stylish and easy to use. However, there are some unique BigCommerce that you may not find elsewhere. We think this is because most themes come from a company called Pixel Union. Not that they are bad designers, but hope to see the unique ideas of other developers.

However, if you want, you can personalize it at any time. You just need to click to enter the online store theme and play the game. You can use almost any theme to sell almost any type of product or service, with a little adjustment. Just click the “Style Editor” function, and then use the default color and other content to reflect your brand or adjust the font. You can also enable mobile themes, modify the main carousel or add a logo. If you have some developer background, you can also use CSS and raw HTML to update your theme.

Maintenance

In the past, we thought that the BigCommerce checkout module looked a bit outdated and difficult to modify. Recently, the situation has changed, BigCommerce can now access its Checkout SDK, or it can access a library with JavaScript elements for checkout. Merchants can now customize each part of their checkout, from the background image to the number of steps the customer needs to move through the process.

Pricing

• Standard Plan – for each month of $ 29.95 you get unlimited products, unlimited storage space, unlimited bandwidth, credit cards and PayPal accepted, and without having to pay transaction fees! With the standard package, you must earn less than $ 500,000 a year, so it only applies to small e-commerce sites. The BigCommerce standard plan also lacks some advanced features, such as subdivision and abandoned shopping cart recovery.
• Plus, plans – for US $ 79.95 per month you will get all the standard functions of planning, transaction cost free, real-time carrier transportation, outstanding payment service provider, to save those who abandoned shopping carts, advanced customer segmentation and hosted on your own domain Checkout. The BigCommerce add this program is suitable for medium-sized online store produce up to $ 150k per year. Choosing this plan will allow you to access some more advanced features. “Abandoned Cart Saver” is also provided here, allowing you to contact users who have not completed the purchase.
• Pro Plan – for US $ 299.95 per month you will get all the Plus plan features free transaction costs, Google customer reviews, product filtration and available dedicated SSL. Warning: The plan starts at $ 299.95 / month with online sales of less than $ 4 million. After that, they need at least $ 150 /mo for every additional $ 2 million in sales. In short, if your income exceeds $ 4 million, they will help you. The BigCommerce Professional Edition plan also comes with faceted search, allowing online shoppers to filter and sort products. This plan will also enable store owners to install third-party SSL certificates.
• Enterprise plans – this requires you to contact BigCommerce for custom pricing, but you can expect all its Plus plan features, as well as dedicated SSL and IP addresses, settings and data migration, priority support, product filtering, advanced reporting tools, Google Trust Shops, etc. As many of our users pointed out, BigCommerce is pushing for more successful customers in accordance with this plan. Therefore, if your annual income exceeds $ 125,000 (or more than 3,000 orders per year), you may end up charging between $ 900 and $ 1,500 per month.

Overall

Overall, BigCommerce is suitable for anyone who does not need an enterprise-level system. That’s not to say that the BigCommerce corporate plan is not worth it, but I think there are more powerful options there. I am hesitant to recommend BigCommerce to a larger company, because you can get the tools you need Shopify or even Magento. As a startup, Volusia giving up is a difficult deal.

BigCommerce works well for small companies, but you need to make a decision based on the scale of future expansion plans. Because if you give up a certain amount of sales, you may end up paying a lot of money.

BigCommerce advantages

• Excellent management tools, including order management, product management, reporting, analysis and all other tools you can think of. BigCommerce is very suitable for daily store management.
• A marketing module with AdWords integration, coupons and other functions. Alternatively, you can use email marketing tools (for example, Mailchimp
• BigCommerce is quite affordable when you consider the number of amazing features it provides and the fact that the number of customers or products you can serve is not limited.
• 24/7 support: Customer support from BigCommerce is great. You can even get help with basic knowledge of SEO and marketing.
• Available applications: Integrate the store with your most commonly used platforms, including QuickBooks, Mailchimp, etc.
• Use the currency that suits you-including multiple currencies at different times.
• No transaction fees: Even if you are using a third-party payment gateway, BigCommerce does not charge any transaction fees.
• The tool for saving the details of abandoned shopping carts is perfect for returning your customers to your store when they are most needed.
• You can get an employee account for any plan as needed.
• Provides built-in marketing tools-including the option to access the built-in blog without integrating WordPress, etc.
• The product can be tried free for 14 days.

BigCommerce Disadvantages 

• If you want to customize the store, the theme can become very expensive-especially if you want to get something from the advanced options.
• It is difficult to adjust all aspects of the homepage, including text content.
• The home carousel needs some trial and error to make it look great.
• Design adjustment functions do not always work the way you want.
• You need to pay quite a lot of access rights to access content such as abandoned shopping cart features.
• You can limit the annual online sales. If this limit is exceeded, you will be forced to pay for more expensive plans
• Themes can be very similar in the free part.
• It is not easy for people selling digital products to manage VAT MOSS rates.
• It can be challenging to find the required direct sales app in the app store

How to prove it

You can try BigCommerce by subscribing to the 30-day free trial at the link: bigcommerce.com

Conclusion

We have come to the end of this journey through the currently most used e-commerce platforms. We hope we have been helpful and have helped you understand which is the most suitable e-commerce platform for you.

We are happy to recommend Shopify to anyone who wants to sell online. In addition, there is a provided 14-day free trial, so you do not have to determine Shopify can submit work for you.

Shopify is suitable for beginners, intermediate and advanced users (users who want to speed up the development process by not spending a lot of time coding or more complicated processes). For just the introduction of e-commerce components in their existing website business owners, especially if they want to sell a digital product.

What is good Shopify is easy to start. You actually only need to register, and through a few settings panels, your store will be up and running. What happened next is equally easy to use. You can customize the design, add products, set payment details, and even shop through the Shopify app.